Oh boy, that is a lot of questions. I'm not sure I can answer all of them, but I'll try my best!

Spoiler:

1. For the sake of gender equality, I'm going to say your BS can be had by the spouse if your founder is female, and/or in the case you wish to have two women as your founding couple, a female alien pregnancy mod can be used. Either way, having alien pregnancy for both genders doesn't really add any 'shortcuts' to the challenge, so I will approve it.

2. Same-sex pregnancy is fine, trips/quads are fine if you randomize the number of babies, not pick it. That's hard to enforce, though, so We'll just have to trust you guys. A golden trip challenge sounds interesting for TS2, especially when you consider that there are three witch alignments. We'll have to discuss it a little further before we implement it as a rule, though.

3. I'm going to say no on those first 2 type of mods; I have a similar one for plantsims, and while the BS would still need to become a zombie the traditional way, it'd make it easier to have the other members of the family potentially become a zombie. I know vampires and werewolves have the ability to turn sims through the bite neck or savage options, but the former does require a high relationship between the two sims, which requires a little more effort on the player's part, and the latter can only be used on adult sims, which forces the player to wait if they want an easy transformation.

That being said, bonus features that do not affect how a sim turns into a creature (bite neck > hunger up, or mortality for vamps & zombies) are allowed. Basically, as long as it doesn't make it easier for your BS or their family to become other creatures, it's allowed.

4. I'm not entirely sure about the point system; I assumed you get +10 points for them being a sibling, and +10 for them being the spare. Thai might have to clarify, though. I could be wrong.

If your BS dies, you have the option of letting their spare takeover, or waiting until you can resurrect them. Really, the choice is up to you.

5. Yes, the BS should be all of the 5 (or 6, if you chose to go the full monster mash route) lifestates at the end of the challenge, so if your sim loses their zombie state you will need to resurrect them as a zombie again.

6. A penalty for unnatural, unplanned deaths sounds good to me! I'll add it in.

7. Does search for UFOs increase the chance of being abducted? That's actually kind of cool; I didn't know that. I could see bonus points for a 'natural' abduction without the FT perk, but seeing as the search for UFOs option requires your sim to build a high interest in the science hobby first, I don't really see why there would be a bonus points for not using it. That'd be like rewarding players for doing less work, in a way. 8. +10 points for one sim having all skills maxed (hidden ones aren't required for TS2 players), and you get an additional 10 points per sim, if you have multiple sims with all maxed skills. The sim does not have to be your BS, it can be any member of their family.

9. Theme-ing an already existing rooms is fine, as long as you have the required number (ex: the kitchen could transformed into your witch themed room, if you wanted.) You can also add/redecorate these rooms at any point in the challenge, as long as they are completed by the time your challenges ends. They do not have to be added as soon as you gain the lifestate, if your sims do not have the funds at the time time.

10. It can be crafted by any witch, as long as you craft it yourself. Mods that make them buyable through the catalog are not permitted.

11. I'll add it in!

12. Not too sure about this one, honestly. Having already played the challenge, I will say that having additional kids adds difficulty, especially with vampire parents/older siblings. Thai might have to look at reducing the points for this, but in my challenge, I counted both the BS and spare as part of the family bonus.

13. Yes, the BS will need to complete uni for them to get points for it. The challenge ends when you choose to end it, so you can continue to work on mini challenges/bonus points after your BS has obtained their lifestates. As long as your BS does not have children, it'll still count as completing the challenge in 2 generations.

14. Good suggestion, we'll work on clarifying that.

15. Gravestones/urns can stay on the home lot, or be moved to a community graveyard. Maybe a small +10 point bonus for free roaming ghosts on the home lot? I can see how they'd get annoying to play with.

Thank you for taking the time to reply! My counter-comments are shorter this time, but spoilers bring neatness. On an unrelated note, I'm now wondering why I put so much effort into properly listing and quoting my sources when I should be doing schoolwork (or, y'know, sleeping).

Spoiler:

Heather wrote:7. Does search for UFOs increase the chance of being abducted?

It is mentioned in the OWBC rules as not allowed for the "MOAR ALIENS X-TREME" mini-challenge (along with the Dance Sphere). According to this post at MATY, the Prima guide states that "Watch for UFOs" gives a higher than normal chance of abduction, but lower than normal chance of impregnation. I'd also like to point to "Alien abduction" on SimsWikia for its info on Dance Spheres (even though I haven't found a proper source for it): "a Sim who has been abducted at least once may be abducted while using the ElectroDance Sphere on medium or high [...] Each Dance Sphere will only trigger one abduction, but the odds of abduction are much higher than with the telescope."

Heather wrote:That'd be like rewarding players for doing less work, in a way.

I'd like to argue that since one of the few ways to gain Science enthusiasm is to be chained to the telescope, the option would become available to you while you're trying to get abducted "the hard way". Then again, Search for UFOs comes at a pretty late enthusiasm stage. The Dance Sphere requires a previous abduction and high body skill, so I guess that would be considered working hard as well (should this discussion be brought up for the OWBC rules?).

As for §14 (death types), may I suggest Cyjon's A Study Of Death? It's a more extensive read than "Death" on SimsWikia, but his information is gathered directly from the game code instead of simmer experience and speculations. He also lists the probability of dying from the different types, alongside a bunch of useful (albeit number-heavy) information relating to the causes of death (e.g. the odds for lightning, the scaring range of a ghost).

I'm in support of everything Heather has just said. I'll add in clarifications for bits we need clarification though:

*Siblings: the points system as it is still stands. So you can get +20 for an alien sibling. You don't NEED to have a large challenge family, you could simply have your founder and then one child, but I wanted to discourage a sort of 'speed-run' atmosphere around the challenge and reward having a big family which is harder & in the context of the challenge more rewarding. This also covers my choices for the Family mini-challenge/why the points are so high. ^^;*Graveyard Smash: I intended on having ghosts free-roam the lots, but I'll elaborate and give a +10 point bonus for free-roam, with an option to have an off-lot graveyard too Also when I have the time I'll look into expanding the details of Graveyard Smash to clarify what constitutes the deaths. I'm not sure about separate points just because the challenge is to have a collection of ghost types as one whole thing as opposed to rewarding for different death types.* I really like the ISBI/Bad Apple style challenge. I'll insert it later. * The Search for UFO/Summon Aliens/normal abduction debate: I think it's probably better to keep the points system as it is. The perk is an advantage if you unlock the knowledge freetime perks but if you wanted to go for it after already filling the family perk tree for example you'd have to work hard to open up the knowledge tree and so it'd be a disadvantage. Similarly if a person worked to increase Science enthusiasm that would be their prerogative. If we add or take away points we might end up narrowing the routes people take to abductions which would make the challenge a bit dull eventually.

Thanks so much for those questions though Mia, they've really helped bring up things that we didn't see initially that we definitely need to look at.

*grr* It seems I may have to bury my Monster Mash challenge since every time I load the save file it crashes the game. I've tried to move it to my laptop just in case it was my desktop that was the problem, but it's still crashing even on my laptop so I have to conclude that the save file is corrupted.

I didn't think it was possible and I get two of them, I think I may be able to save my challenge. Will it be an annoyance to get it moved back to active? I wasn't sure if I could save it yesterday, but I have.

I know right? They are adorable, and when I go into CAS to change them I can see their genetics properly. My first one, the toddler has his daddy's hair, his mom's rainbow skin and her pink eyes, he's freakin cute!

I'm just staring at these rules, willing my game to work. Just were my founder at the last attempt died, I tabbed away to check these rules. I got distracted and my computer went to sleep. Now the game isn't responding and my brain is melting down. If I lose this attempt, I'm going to stop trying for a while. I got a witch, I'm like 12 hours from an heir being born, and I'm panicked!

I got more, another hybrid this time I got a Ghost-Witch and I finally got my Mummy which I think is the hardest one to get in Sims 3. I can never find the Crypt Moth for the elixer and I realized I was doing something wrong with the Canopic Jars to get them from the sarcophagus. Anyway:

Thaitanic wrote:Either! As long as they have alien in them somehow and originate from at least one vanilla sim (I haven't actually played TS4 so you guys'll have to tell me if this is possible )

Thanks Thai!

The thing with Sims 4 alien hybrids is that they look and socialize like aliens, but don't have the powers. I'd been trying to do this challenge with TS2 and it was stressing me out. And my big thing with trying this is to take a tiny break from my OWBC. Not the TS4 version is easy. I tried to do it with an abduction and it was tough. You have to have a certian amount of time in the Scientist career and create a satellite dish. Then it is a crap shoot from there as to whether they will be abducted.

I got a migraine and started from the beginning with a vanilla female to try out marrying in an alien and having babies "the old fashioned way". That is actually just as much work. I had to do the whole scientist thing, but as soon as I got the dish, I had alien visitors and my vanilla sim is so close to hooking him.